Trivializing Ambassadors

Published: July 3, 1989

Presidents and Congress have a habit of rewarding fat cats and cronies with foreign embassies, of treating many ambassadorial appointments as if they don't much matter in representing American interests and values. But they do matter, sometimes critically.

President Bush has not improved on the tradition, to judge by his nominations to Spain, Australia and New Zealand. The only distinction visible in his proposed Ambassador to Madrid, Joseph Zappala, a Florida developer, is a distinctively large contribution to the Republican Party, reportedly $126,000. Ditto for another Florida businessman, Melvin Sembler ($127,000), nominated to Canberra. And the choice for Wellington is Della Newman, a Seattle broker who managed Mr. Bush's state campaign.

Dispatching a lightweight or inexperienced envoy sends a message of unconcern verging on contempt. That's why a move by Senator Paul Sarbanes deserves support. The Maryland Democrat has forced the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to put off considering this trio until mid-July, giving the Senate more time to weigh the appointees' qualifications - and for all concerned to think harder about the importance of ambassadors.

No one argues that the country would be better served if all ambassadors were professional diplomats. That would have meant losing such star non-career performers as Mike Mansfield, Averell Harriman, David Bruce and Edwin Reischauer, to name a few. Nor should campaign contributors be automatically excluded. They can do a good job, depending on their political instincts, stature and experience. Moreover, foreign service officers can make feeble ambassadors, given to inertia, caution and fixation with form.

Presidents need considerable latitude in selecting what are in part personal representatives. The Constitution spells out their right to do so, subject to senatorial consent. It clearly stretches the legislative role to withhold or delay confirmation if a senator objects to a nominee on ideological grounds -an abuse repeatedly and indefensibly indulged by Senator Jesse Helms.

Yet advice and consent mean something: the Senate has an obligation to hold Presidential nominees to rudimentary standards of competence. Senator Sarbanes has reason to be troubled when Mr. Sembler, the nominee for Australia, supplies this written answer to a question about his qualifications: ''I have been known as a coalition-builder, able to organize my peers to action in support of worthy civic, charitable and political causes.''

Nearly identical language was used by whoever answered the same written question for Mr. Zappala, the nominee for Spain, treating both the Senate and an important capital with the same manipulative cynicism.

Those old European capitals, with large embassy staffs and calm relations, have long offered safe places to reward fat cats. That's much less true today. Change now buffets Western and Eastern Europe. Consider Italy, where only a year ago and at some political cost, a centrist coalition government agreed to accept U.S. airbases soon to be closed by a Socialist government in Spain. Yet Mr. Bush's choice for Rome is Peter Secchia, manager of his Michigan campaign, whose innocence in diplomacy seems complete.

Does it repay Italy's fidelity or soothe Spain's nationalism for the United States to send them envoys conspicuously unequipped by experience or knowledge? It would be wise for the President to reconsider such nominees; and if not, permissible, indeed salutary, for the Senate to reject them.